Atle Selberg

The Selberg interview

In the article “The Lord of the Numbers, Atle Selberg. On his Life and Mathematics”, in the October 2008 issue of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-08-01223-8 ) one can read the following:

Of special interest is Selberg's personal account of the events around the elementary proof of the Prime Number Theorem. Various accounts of this have appeared in the literature. In an extended version of the translation more details of Selberg's account may be found. In this extended version Selberg refers to two letters by Hermann Weyl to Nathan Jacobson who was the editor of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society at the time. All this can be found at http://www.math.ntnu.no/Selberg-interview/. (Confer also Normat 56#2 (2008).) Here also is available the complete transcription of the interview in Norwegian, in addition to some photos and material in connection with his 90th birthday and his death.

Without further ado, here is the transcription (pdf file, 27 megabytes, 175 pages).